Jan Olszewski

Jan Olszewski (20 August 1930-7 February 2019) was Prime Minister of Poland from 6 December 1991 to 5 June 1992, succeeding Jan Krzysztof Bielecki and preceding Waldemar Pawlak. He was a member of Center Agreement and later the Movement for Reconstruction of Poland.

Biography
Jan Olszewski was born in Warsaw, Poland in 1930, and he was sympathetic to socialism in his early years, as his family was supportive of the Polish Socialist Party. During World War II, he participated in the 1944 Warsaw Uprising, and he worked for the Ministry of Justice and the Academy of Sciences under the Polish People's Republic starting in the 1950s. He also became a journalist who established a working relationship with communist leader Wladyslaw Gomulka, but he became an underground intellectual due to his support for the rehabilitation of Home Army members. Olszewski became a major leader of the Solidarity movement during the 1980s, and, after the fall of communism, he became a member of the Center Agreement party. He was appointed Prime Minister by President Lech Walesa, and he notably argued in favor of a purge of former communist officials and argued for increased democratization and de-communization at all levels of Polish society. Olszewski became rivals with Walesa, vying for power in the country; Olszewski stepped down after losing the support of the Sejm. He went on to serve as a member of the Sejm for the Movement for Reconstruction of Poland from 1997 to 2005, and he died in 2019 at the age of 88.